{"id":4634,"title":"Interview with Peer Bode","kind":"biblio","url":"https://www.videohistoryproject.org/interview-peer-bode","version":"271e99c9dd0fab62fe8e8a45dfa3ed33dcc7fe28bf2bb013f3872fa600a80e93","modified":"2026-09-13T21:52:00.9236052+00:00","credits":[{"role":"Author","name":"Chris Hill"}],"authorKeys":["Hill, Chris"],"subjects":["Interviews"],"metadata":[{"label":"Publication","value":"The Squealer","url":null},{"label":"Date","value":"Winter 1996/Spring 1997","url":null},{"label":"Volume","value":"11","url":null},{"label":"Issue","value":"2","url":null},{"label":"ETC archive","value":"ETC1131","url":null},{"label":"Interviewee","value":"Peer Bode","url":null}],"citations":{"page":"\u0022Interview with Peer Bode.\u0022 Video History Project, Experimental Television Center, 2026. https://www.videohistoryproject.org/interview-peer-bode.","publication":"Chris Hill. Interview with Peer Bode. The Squealer. Winter 1996/Spring 1997.","risUrl":"https://www.videohistoryproject.org/citation/4634.ris"},"links":[{"label":"Scanned document","url":"https://archive.org/details/ETC1131","relationship":"linked document; contents not retrieved","contentType":"application/pdf"}],"sections":[{"name":"body","source":"VHP record body","generated":false,"characters":43941},{"name":"summary","source":"existing VHP generated summary","generated":true,"characters":673}],"content":{"section":"body","source":"VHP record body","generated":false,"text":"HILL: New York State was one of the earliest public funders of video art and artist-run centers in the country. I\u0027d like to talk about the Experimental Television Center in Owego, NY, where you worked for many years teaching artists to access the video tools in the studio for their residencies and also doing your own work. Also, I would like you to address the aesthetic changes between the 1970s and the 1980s, looking at how attention to the materials and modernist queries into the \u0022essential features\u0022 of the medium have shifted. BODE: Video was one of those forms which didn\u0027t come out of a singular tradition, and because it wasn\u0027t connected to a singular ideology, video existed in multiple communities and built multiple discourses. At the same time, if you\u0027re willing to live with the idea of multiple discussions then there is some inquiry as to how they temper each other, how they activate each other, and how the discussions are out of sync with each other... HILL: One question which video art begs to some audiences today is who saw this work in the 70s, where did this work show? Many people\u0027s media cultural experience tells them that if it doesn\u0027t show on television it doesn\u0027t exist. This was probably true for people in the 70s as well as people in the 90s. But there was another system that was supported enthusiastically, even though it was virtually underground in that there weren\u0027t huge demands for publicly funded experimental work to be shown to large audiences. In the 70s it was possible for decentralized artmaking and especially alternative cultural centers to be research and development as well as a testing ground for emerging artists. BODE: The idea of the artists\u0027 space--that is an interesting history, and one that one could be tracked from the early cine clubs in the 20s and 30s in Europe that were really clubs for film makers and visual artists who cooperatively shared equipment and a screening space... Maya Deren [American experimental filmmaker] in the 1940s was aware that not only was it possible to put together a new kind of cinema but that one needed also to make a new kind of theater, and to deal with funding. By the end of the 60s and in the early 70s a number of factors came together so that in fact there could be funding for these alternative artist-run centers. And then a whole range of work was created within those centers. The Experimental Television Center [1971-78 in Binghamton, NY, and 1978-present in Owego, NY] had an early access program which loaned out the 5 or 6 portapaks. Ralph [Hocking, founder of ETC and current co-director with Sherry Miller Hocking] was dealing with the idea of using low cost 1/2\u0022 portapaks and making them available to the Binghamton community. Within a relatively short time Ralph was also helping Nam June Paik and Shuya Abe complete their Paik-Abe video synthesizer and beginning to support initiatives involving the modification of low-cost video systems and then building basic modular electronic tools. That would be Ralph\u0027s vocabulary, I think. There\u0027s a certain attitude at the Center that comes partly from Ralph\u0027s background in sculpture, ceramics and photography, an idea that has to do with personal tools. There were kinds of materials one could personally own, and therefore have high access to and work with in a very particular way, and other tools that could be shared among a number of people. Then there was another question-how do you make the access to the capital-intensive equipment be time-based and still make sense of what it really takes for people to make art with these tools, to think through something and to spend time really exploring and really learning something? The learning aspect was part of the whole process. This need to actually learn how these tools worked and what new configurations might be that would deliver what you might want, since possibilities for these electronic tools were largely unknown. The model of industry was not the model one wanted to imitate because it was structured to produce certain genres of work... HILL: And it was also designed to satisfy a market... BODE: It was a kind of joke -the Detroit assembly line way of working. And one didn\u0027t need to make work that way... The material in the studio begins to be in dialogue with the material of the world, and at that point one can critique the world as well. Ralph was interested in how a lot of the industrial television tools that were out there existed in very reduced configurations compared to what those tools really could do. Like the SEG [special effects generator]. The front panel on the SEG totally reduced what was possible to access inside of the machine. This came up over and over again. The video tools were all industrial tools, they were all part of that other system. But then things like the portapak came out and began to undermine a whole set of practices and values. People like David Jones [tool designer, ETC technical director since 1972] would look at the equipment and say -jeez, you could restructure that piece of equipment so that it would do many more things than just what the front panel, its marketed definition, enabled you to do ... Ralph was interested in externalizing internal controls. So the target, beam, and focus controls that adjusted how the tube picked up the image were externalized on the outside of the cameras, turned into pots [potentiometers] sitting on the outside of the camera. The tools began to get modified to go beyond what the limits of the industry definition of them had been. People like Nam June [Paik] and Shuya Abe were good examples of what we would now call computer hackers, where this sort of kluging of found stuff would happen. The Paik- Abe synthesizer was a color encoder made from a color camera and a video mixer. They didn\u0027t invent those components, they were parts from other already functioning pieces of equipment which were then reconfigured. The Paik-Abe synthesizer was a 7-channel mixer/ colorizer; you had potentially 7 layers of video. But this was not an industry idea. At that time broadcast television was based upon traditional filmic language, which was to get to from shot 1 to shot 2 to shot 3. There was no reason to overlay images ... The guys from WNET [New York public television station] came to the Center. John Godfrey was a broadcast engineer and very sympathetic and interested in a new kind of working, and David Loxton was a producer. I remember them being at the Center wearing their white shirts and ties and looking very formal, like business men, and holding clip lights for Nam June while he had a little model of the Empire State Building on a lazy susan spinning around [one of shots in the tape The Selling of New York, 1972, by Nam June Paik]. They had several cameras going at once that were then being colorized and keyed and overlaid. The scene was Nam June grabbing the Empire State building with his hand and pulling it out of the frame. In any case, WNET didn\u0027t have their TV Lab yet in New York and Paik and Abe came to the Center to do their work. Within a year or so they established the WNET lab for artists to work and make new television. These ideas about labs for artists using video- these things all happened simultaneously in different parts of the country. HILL: ...WNET also screened experimental work on series like VTR (Video Television Review), hosted by Russell Connor... BODE: People put those programs together with someone to introduce the work, and it was all about trying to figure out how to do the cultural translation or set up a context that could be understood by audiences unfamiliar with this kind of work... That\u0027s where this work was on television; there wasn\u0027t any MTV. And that work, in terms of its electronic base and its visual, painterly language, was doing something that also wasn\u0027t even yet a part of advertising. It really had a separate identity, and you could argue whether it was more advanced or not advanced, but it had a real difference about it. At the same time there were other distribution venues -museums and alternative centers, and then also people being interested in media activities on the street ... My own coming out of a film background and a New American Cinema history background connected video work with that which was being created through an engagement with issues around materials and the process of seeing and perception and cognitive overlays as well. Film work was not coming at first through the museum; it was circulating through another set of institutions that the film community had created for itself-places like the Millennium and Anthology Film Archives [in New York]... HILL: Can you say something about the relationships that bridged your working with film and video, and also music? BODE: Let me step back before I do that... this thing about where people saw the work. There was art criticism or cultural reporting that also had to do with something about the ideas and values of the 60s. There was an attempt to identify where things were changing in response to changes in values. It has perhaps some of the same flavor of people who are involved with computers now and their ideas showing up in the popular press and media. It\u0027s important to realize that this stuff wasn\u0027t completely disconnected from the larger culture. It was one of the important discussions of the culture, even if it named itself as \u0022alternative culture.\u0022 HILL: So alternatives to the dominant culture forms and activities were named and tolerated. They may have been understood as being critical of the mainstream, but they were still tolerated and publicly supported as necessary channels of culture. BODE: That whole relationship between the PBS artist centers [WNET-New York, KQED-San Francisco, WGBH-Boston] and the other artists-run centers [like ETC] is interesting one to flesh out, because the artists-run centers had connections to their local communities and also created a different definition of community ... And the difference between the large capital investment productions and the low capital investment productions. This is something that doesn\u0027t get talked about enough-what does it mean for something to be a $50 production, or a $100 production or a $10,000 production or a $5 million production? It was clear that some work could be made with just that portapak. That same kind of difference began to set up around different aspects of media production. When you have a larger capital outlay system for the production, you also have a larger capital outlay for the promotion and distribution of that production. These activities are certainly part of working in an information and an advertising based culture. The resulting perception can be, though, that those projects which didn\u0027t spend the money on advertising never existed, and that\u0027s part of the history that needs to be done. A lot of the focus and the commitment in the 70s were to put the resources into the actual making of the work, not into its advertising. That\u0027s important, because there is a tendency for histories to be connected to large institutions which had little spaces of alternative culture - small pockets within the larger structures - and it would be a mistake to historically look at those as the only alternative activity that was going on. Those larger institutions were clearly in dialogue with the other scenes where the research and new idea developments happened, places which received less funding but were higher in terms of freedom and actual connection to artmaking communities. HILL: There was also an aesthetic investment in process, which for many people meant that the product was not valorized; rather the process was important, and of course that led to many tapes not being preserved as some final object... BODE: What you were commenting on before, the early tool making ideas. ...There was also this issue of what were the other models out there? What kinds of questions could ","offset":0,"nextOffset":12000,"totalCharacters":43941,"complete":false},"rightsUrl":"https://www.videohistoryproject.org/terms-service"}